Over the past three months, Land & Property Services (LPS) has been gathering information essential to ensuring that business rates are fair and up to date.
It has embarked on Reval2026 – an exercise designed to ensure that the rateable value of non-domestic properties properly reflects changes in the market.
Based on a valuation date of April 1 2024, business ratepayers are being contacted to provide the rent and lease information of their property on that date to LPS. The information collected will be used to compile a new valuation list to calculate business rate bills from April 1 2026.
Last year (2023/2024), business contributed around £690 million in rates to help fund vital public services such as education, health, and infrastructure, as well as a wide range of functions undertaken by district councils.
As rates bills are based on property values, LPS needs to carry out revaluations so that revenue we collect is based on values which are up to date.
Reval2026 provides businesses with an opportunity to contribute towards ensuring the accuracy of bills. A revaluation exercise like this is also about maintaining fairness within the rating system but to do this we need up to date information.
To keep up to date with changing economic conditions, revaluations take place every three years. In England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, the last non-domestic revaluations were in 2023, which was the first time all were carried out on a common date. All four are once again progressing towards 2026 revaluations.
Approximately 110,000 letters and emails have been issued to local businesses during April and May, inviting owners to complete Rent and Lease Questionnaires (RALQ’s). The deadline for completion has been extended to August 31.
The question most business ratepayers will be interested in is what difference this will make to their rates bill?
The first thing to be clear about is that this revaluation does not in itself change the amount of revenue raised from rates. Rather it redistributes who pays what on the basis of more up to date information about what is happening in the property market.
The outcome for individual businesses can be a higher or lower bill, depending on the relative movement in values in the location and property sector since the previous revaluation. This is a normal consequence of a revaluation. A change in rateable value at revaluation does not always mean a change in the rate bill.
Businesses will find out their draft valuation in the autumn of 2025 before it takes effect from April 2026. They will also be able to view the same information for similar properties in their own locality and right across the north.
This transparency will allow businesses to compare their valuations and check for consistency. To find out more about Reval2026 visit NI Reval2026 | Department of Finance (finance-ni.gov.uk)
- Angela McGrath is Commissioner of Valuation at Land & Property Services
